Onetime prince of mail order has gone upscale only to become a mean little peasant.
Written: Mar 10 '08 (Updated May 23 '09)
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Overall rating: 2.5 stars (and that's being generous based on very positive dealings with this business from years ago)
I've bought from Sierra Trading Post (STP) since the early 1990's, back when the owners had one of their children hand-draw all of the product illustrations in their catalogs. Originally product liquidators for outdoor gear and outdoor clothing, the company has very significantly branched out and changed remarkably in the past 15 years, now selling high end European suits and other men's fashion/dress clothing in addition to other more upscale clothing and footwear items for both men and women. I was originally extremely impressed with both the prices and the customer service. I had a few returns and other issues and the customer service reps back in the 90's were outstanding - exceptionally friendly, very knowledgable and extremely accommodating. At least once when I had a question about a product, the CSR asked if it would be ok to put me on hold for a few minutes while he or she ran to their store or warehouse and brought back one of those items to describe it to me first hand, in detail.
I think the following statement puts into perspective how highly I used to regard STP. I found out, after placing my first order or two, that STP's owners feel compelled to put some proseltyzing message about their Christian beliefs in their catalog. I very firmly feel that because one's choice of religion is a very personal decision, one should keep one's religious beliefs personal and to oneself. For me to continue to do business with Sierra Trading Post, it had to be impressive enough of an all-around shopping experience to offset that intrusive religious advocacy. And during the early to mid 1990's, STP was that impressive - it was acknowledged by many people to have hands-down, the best customer service of any mail order company, better than LL Bean, Eddie Bauer, better even than Newegg.com.
What STP Sells
So, what can one buy at www.sierratradingpost.com? Nowadays, virtually anything you can wear in any setting or occasion, plus almost anything you can play with outdoors. STP sells men's, women's, and to a much lesser extent, children's clothing of all sorts. You can buy many types of outerwear - from hiking gear by Lowe Alpine to skiing jackets by Spyder to a cycling jersey by Pearl Izumi to flyfishing waders to Carrhart work jackets to keep you warm when you're slogging through the mud to fix that fence in the back 40, to a cashmere overcoat for a night out at the opera. You can buy virtually any type of footwear - ranging from $300 mountaineering boots to Teva sandals to Brooks or New Balance running shoes to Ecco golf shoes to Timberland casual shoes to high end handmade English and Italian calfskin dress shoes, plus outfit your feet in wool hiking socks, wicking running socks or fine merino wool dress socks. STP sells casual clothing of all sorts (pants, shirts, shorts, underwear) by brands such as Columbia, Royal Robbins, Sportif USA, etc... as well as dress clothing, including suits, sport coats, pants, ties, skirts, etc... from brands such as Ralph Lauren, Bill Blass, Orvis and haut couture from various European manufacturers/designers, including d'Avenza men's suits with a MSRP of $3,600.
On top of all the clothing, STP sells accessories like belts and wallets, luggage, even some grooming and fragrance products. They also sell outdoor gear to go with the outerwear including skis and snowboards, tents, sleeping bags, backpacks, kayaks, bicycles, climbing gear, snowshoes, fishing gear, hunting accessories, and sunglasses. They even sell some home furnishing items.
Website and Online Shopping
The website is set up about as well as one could expect - easily the equal of the websites of LL Bean, Eddie Bauer, etc... in detail and ease of use, although from an aesthetics standpoint, not quite as slickly commercial as those mail order giants. The menus are simple and allow one to progress from general categories like Outdoor Gear and Menswear to very specific sub-menus that list all of the various subcategories - STP's menu system even has separate categories for sports sandals and for casual sandals in its footwear section. STP's online site allows for customer reviews of products and since some of the reviews are quite negative, it seems that STP does not censor them like certain other online vendors like Buy.com and TigerDirect.com currently do and how Newegg.com formerly did. The website also features two options I really like, your choice of how many items are displayed per screen, from 20 to 60 (even more would be better, though - the less time spent navigating the better) and the option to list and display the items by a variety of criteria including by brand, price low to high, price high to low, ratings in the customer reviews, newly listed and relevance.
The ordering process is quite standard for an online vendor. You select an item, specify size, color or other option as applicable, indicate quantity and add it to your cart. When you are finished shopping and want to complete the transaction, click on check out and then proceed to pay. I believe you have the option of storing your shipping address and other information online with STP to quicken the process. You can also add coupon codes for discounts on the shipping or overall price (see below under Pros). Enter your credit card information, press the complete transaction button, and hopefully (see below under Cons) your order will be placed and soon be on its way to you.
Shipping is based on price, ranging from a minimum of $5.95 to $13.95 on orders over $200, for UPS ground service. DHL (from my experience usually a lot better than UPS) 2nd day air and next day air shipping are available for $10 and $20 more, respectively. However, they will charge more if shipping outside of the continental U.S. and will give you a surcharge for large or heavy packages. I'd say their shipping is average - fairly typical in some cases, but a bit costly with other purchases. The $10 upgrade from ground to second day air seems a few dollars higher than most other mail order companies.
Pros
- Prices often good, usually better than other online retailers who carry the same or similar products, such as REI. Occasionally, one can find a real bargain, particularly on an item in their clearance or bargain bin departments, especially if you are shopping for apparel or footwear and are a very small, very thin or very large person.
- Very broad selection of apparel and gear for the person who likes the outdoors.
- Most brands are very high quality, from manufacturers such as Patagonia, Lowe Alpine, Marmot, Pearl Izumi, Vasque, Asolo, etc....
- Discount codes for discounts on shipping and overall order are often available. Sign up to their mailing list (both regular and e-mail) and you can regularly receive coupon codes for discounts. Often their printed catalogs contain a riddle, the answer to which is a code for free shipping. You can find information on the latest coupon codes in the Sierra Trading Post thread in the Hot Deals forum of the excellent bargain-hunters' website, www.fatwallet.com - just do a search for "sierra trading" and you'll find it.
Cons
- Pricing. The real bargains of the past are now quite rare. I bought several jackets and parkas from them a decade ago and got from 60% to 80% off MSRP, which was not at all atypical of their discounts. Nowadays, you'd be lucky to get more than 35-40% off and usually the good deals are only available in oddball sizes like XS, 28" waist pants, 36" shoulder jackets, size 6 men's shoes, etc.... STP used to be the cheapest place to find a particular item, but if the item is on sale or clearance at Campmor or REI, those two stores will usually beat STP's prices.
Customer service has gone downhill very significantly in the following ways:
- If you have a question about a product that is not answered by the product description in STP's catalog or website, you are SOL. Unless by some chance you happen upon a CSR who owns that item and can speak from personal experience, you will not get any more information than what the CSR can read to you from their webpage. At least their CSR's are native English speakers rather than "Bombay Bobby" or "Calcutta Cathy" (don't you just hate it when someone who is obviously sitting in a customer service telecenter in India, who may or may not be able to understand what you are saying and may or may not be able to communicate a helpful response to you, tries to tell you his or her name is "Andy" or "Sean" when it's pretty clearly Analjeet or Sundip? However, I digress).
- Making the customer happy is no longer the top priority for the CS department - mollifying the customer's complaints slightly and avoiding extra costs to the company are now more important. Half of the CSR's with whom you speak have a distinctly non-friendly tone to their voices. If there is a problem with your order, you will need to suggest a resolution that will make you happy - STP will no longer take the initiative and offer you discounts to compensate for problems.
- Delays. Shipping used to go out same day, now delays of several days before shipping are not uncommon. It also takes them longer, from several days to a week or more, than it should to credit your credit card when you return an item. If you make an inquiry via the "contact us" link on their website, you might or might not get an answer and if you do, it likely will be more than a day later. Also, it is not uncommon to be put on hold for more than 15 minutes if you call customer service.
- Their online order system has a major flaw: it does a "precharge verification" of your credit card before fully placing your order. I don't recall ever having this happen with another vendor, but before your order is processed, they put a $.50 charge on your credit card, presumably to verify that there will be no payment problems. Ironically, this can cause payment problems and significant delays - see below.
I've only ordered from STP a couple of times in the past few years, largely as a result of not finding any tremendous bargains. I did notice a few years back that it seems like service had slipped to the average range. My last order with STP was in December of 2007. I placed an order online for several items I wanted to give my wife as Christmas presents and this order, in fact, had about half of her presents in it. I confirmed that with regular, ground shipping (for which I had a free coupon code) I would get the package with two days to spare. After placing my order, I got an e-mail the next day saying that my credit card had been rejected. I thought that could only have happened if I had somehow mistakenly entered my information or if someone had stolen my identity and plundered my account, so I called up my bank and after spending entirely too much time on the phone, learned there was no problem with insufficient funds but that STP had placed a $.50 precharge on my account. My bank doesn't accept charges under a dollar on this Visa check card, so while my order would have sailed through if it was $500, the precharge amount that was one-thousandth of that amount was denied. I called up STP and complained to customer service about this and requested that my order be placed through without the precharge nonsense and asked them to upgrade my shipping to expedite the order in time for Christmas. They put the order through but refused to upgrade the shipping for me at their expense, so I had to pay an extra $12 or so more to get second day shipping. I confirmed with the CSR that I would be able to receive the package before Christmas with the second day air shipping and she assured me there would be no problems.
A day later I attempted to track my order and found that it apparently had not yet shipped. I called STP customer service and demanded that the package be shipped immediately and was told that I was just being impatient, that it had shipped and the tracking number was just delayed getting into the system because of the holiday rush. The following day the tracking number was still not in the system and I called back and was told it had not yet shipped but would ship that day. The CSR assured me it would still arrive the day before Christmas and refused to upgrade the shipping to next day delivery as I requested to be sure I would receive the package by December 24th. On Christmas morning, I found myself in the rather embarrassing position of telling my wife that she would have to wait to get half of her presents. The package finally arrived several days after Christmas. I called STP CS and demanded to speak to a manager, but the CSR wouldn't put me through and insisted she would take care of the situation. Initially, she offered me a $5 coupon toward my next purchase. I nearly blew my top and told her with customer service like I was continuing to get on this order, there wouldn't be another one. Finally I had to call back and this time was transferred to a supervisor, who initially attempted to give me a $15 coupon toward my next purchase and offered to refund to me the extra amount I had paid to upgrade the shipping over the standard ground rate. After much haggling, explaining how I had been forced to waste hours dealing with incompetent service on this order, how STP made numerous promises it never kept, how I had been embarrassed not having presents in time for Christmas, how I had been a loyal customer for 15 years and how tremendously the service had deteriorated since the early days, she finally agreed to credit back to me the full amount of shipping plus credit back $25 on my bill for the order instead of some coupon toward a future purchase.
Conclusion
I've noticed over the years that as STP has expanded its line to branch out from outdoor gear and wear to casual wear to, more recently, high-end dress fashions, both the percentage discount on their products has dropped and their customer service has declined as well. The deterioration of customer service, from the very best from any mail order company to outright crappy service in all ways, has been a major disappointment. Over the past five years, my orders with STP have dropped from three to five times a year to once every 1 to 1 1/2 years largely because of the declining value of STP products and pricing. With my last order being as bad as it was, I only plan to place future orders with STP if I can't find the item elsewhere or it would be very significantly more to buy it from another vendor.
If you scroll down to the bottom of the STP home page, there is a link for "What we believe." Click that link and you'll see a statement that "Our business ethics must be consistent with the faith of the owners in Jesus Christ and His teachings." The bible-thumpers have a little acronym: WWJD? I don't think the answer to that question would involve breaking promises, failing to take responsibility for mistakes, misrepresenting facts, dilatory conduct, causing others to be embarrassed or inconvenienced, and forcing another person to fight tooth-and-nail to be compensated fairly for poor treatment, do you?
UPDATE 8/22/08: Lately STP has been e-mailing me 25% off We-Want-You-Back coupons and I needed a pair of flip flops, so I placed another order with them, for a pair of Teva Mush flip flop sandals, for a very good and cheap price. It took four days to ship it to me from one state away (probably only 150-200 miles at the most), when it never takes more than two days (and usually only one day) by standard USPS First Class Mail for a letter or package to be delivered from that state. That's pretty poor shipping - I sometimes receive packages from California half a country away a day or two faster. Product was pretty crappy, but that's not STP's fault. Be aware, though, that if you use one of their return shipping labels, they will bill you an extra $5.75 for the cost of the return shipping. Since my flip flops cost $8.25 with the discount, it didn't make much sense to return them, as even First Class Mail would have been around $3 to ship them back.
This order has provided further proof that mediocre-at-best is about all one can expect from STP service.
[Update 9-8-08]: On 8/22/08 I wrote and submitted a review of the Teva Mush flip flop sandals on STP's customer reviews section. As is the case with Amazon and several other online retailers who offer customer reviews, STP has a statement that it may take a few days, subject to STP approval, before a review is published. My review still has not appeared on their website and I can only conclude that it is because I gave this flimsy footwear product a 2/5 rating along with a review that explained in detail why it was not a good product. Thus, it appears that STP is censoring reviews that it deems too candid and too likely to discourage customers from purchasing the item. I consider this to be less-than-honest conduct and hardly what a normal person would interpret as being "consistent with the teachings of Jesus." But then again, they don't really say that, they say they will base their conduct on the faith of the owners in those teachings (i.e., their own interpretations). Really disappointing.
Recommended:
No
What product did you purchase or try to purchase? Snowshoes, socks, sandals
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Epinions.com ID:
lousygolfer
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Reviews written: 43
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